Recording A Scene

There are as many ways of learning lines as, well, actors. but most of them are repetitious in nature. That is, you either speak and then listen back to your lines over and over, you write them down over and over, or you move through the script over and over and magically the words are committed to memory.

With Rehearsal, we’ve given you several ways to rehearse with your lines. As you’ll see later, the rehearsal sessions will include visually tying the lines to your recordings of them. Use Rehearsal however you want, but the following method has been designed specifically to the best practices we’ve found in surveying working actors and acting coaches.

We’re going to use a technique that David Lawrence likes to call “dialogue minus one,” in honor of the old Music Minus One instrument practice records. This was a set of records out at one time that allowed you to practice your instrument with a real orchestra, playing all the parts of a classical piece, minus the instrument you were practicing. For example, if you were learning the violin, the orchestra played the entire piece, without any lead violin. You would play along with the recording, and once you got the tempo, the notes, the attack and so on just right, you sounded as if you were part of the orchestra. With practice, you ended up fitting right in, and we’re going to do the same thing with every scene you create and rehearse with in Rehearsal.

Side note: the 1973 album by Albert Brooks, featuring Georgie Jessel, called Comedy Minus One, was a similar album – if you told the jokes just right, and your timing was perfect, Albert and Georgie appeared to be having a comedic conversation with you – and even the audience would laugh and applaud at just the right time. It’s available at Amazon, and it’s one of the inspirations for Rehearsal.

So, here’s the process for recording your lines in Rehearsal:

Highlight your lines. If you’re one of those actors who doesn’t like to highlight your lines, that’s cool. Rotate your screen to your desired orientation: portrait or landscape. Portrait gives you more of the script to work with per screen, and landscape lets you see the script in larger type.

Notice the round red circle at the very left of the bottom menu bar. That’s the Record button, which once recording begins, will be lit. Tap the Record button. You’ll hear ADR beeps that let you get set to record your scene. You can use the same cadence you use when doing ADR work: beep-beep-beep-speak. When you’re finished with the scene, you’ll be tapping the Record button again to stop the recording.

Hold your device where you can comfortably see the script. You don’t have to have it right next to your mouth to make a clean recording. Holding it as if you were texting or reading email works just fine.

Read ALL the lines (yours AND the other characters’), but read your lines at half volume compared the other characters’ lines. You’ll find that when you rehearse with this scene later, you’ll still be able to hear your lines if you need to; then, once you know them, you’ll be able to talk over them without competing with them volume wise.

Read all the way to the end of that particular scene:

If you make a mistake at any time during the course of the recording, you can always stop the recording and start over, or if the mistake was made during another character’s line, you can ignore it. It’s your lines you want to learn cold.

Finished? Tap the Record button again to stop the recording

Once you stop the recording, you’ll immediately see a dialog box slide into place with a preloaded name for your scene:

You can change that, or leave it the way it is – Rehearsal will change the name of the scene for every new scene you do. Name your scene, then save it, or, if you’d like to record it again, cancel the Name and Save process.

And that’s it. The moment you’re finished recording your script, you can begin rehearsing with it. Later, as you find new ways to deliver certain lines, you can create virtually unlimited new versions of scenes, naming them Scene 1, version 7 and the like. But let’s rehearse with what we’ve got now.

You can also use this feature to respond to voiceover auditions – see how in the Voicework section of this manual.

Next: Rehearse